Pope Benedict XVI argued that it is "necessary and reasonable to raise the question of God through the use of reason" and to understand "theology, as inquiry into the rationality of faith." (Ratzinger 2006) The idea that faith per se can be reconciled with rationality
If you can breathe, fully and deeply, and if your breath is consciously attuned, through feeling, to the tangible and infinite energy of the universe - only then can you love.
If your attention is always free of obsession with your own thoughts and reveries and memories and reactions - only then are you capable of genuine participation in life, even in the matters that might otherwise preoccupy or disturb you.
If your living body is open, relaxed, fluid with feeling, supple and graceful in its action and expression, and not bound up in a physically visible knot of tension and self-possession - only then can you live a truly effective and moral relational life in this human realm.
And - only then are you happy!
The only living and true religion in any society and in any historical epoch is the effort of the individual to surrender to the radical intuition of Truth and to be bodily transformed by the Radiant Transcendental Love-Energy that moves the world.
Mindless embodiment.
Consciousness without inwardness.
Thus it becomes obvious.
Every object is only Light, the Energy of Consciousness.
Even so, there is no mind.
Only this stark embodiment, without inwardness.
First transcend your atrocious mind, not the body.
Inwardness is flight from Life and Love.
Only the body is Full of Consciousness
Therefore, be the body-only, feeling into Life.
Surrender the mind into Love, until the body dissolves in Light.
Dare this Ecstasy, and never be made thoughtful by birth and experience and death.
Quite the tour de force, thank you for expressing your thoughts so clearly.
I especially liked the idea of salvation in the face of atheism and rampant godlessness: to rise to the level where we become our own judge, based on an alignment with logos, a sort of wholesome insight. Repentance becomes an internal suffering because of illumination instead of fear of external punishment. But only, as you say, if the capability for it is there - and the thirst for God you spoke of in connection with faith: the thirst must be great indeed for us to seek out the light, for the suffering and resistance are great as well.
As for the project of a transcendental theology for non-believers, I think it's very important (Jordan Peterson's success proves the point). Other approaches risk getting caught up in a knot of misleading presuppositions inherited from modernity and further twisted by our own times, and as a consequence, completely misunderstand ancient ideas.
It seems to me that two approaches are worth doing in parallel: 1) doing our best to express theological and religious ideas in our own natural ways, using modern language and b) getting a grip on the historical dynamics of presuppositions, à la R.G. Collingwood. These might even be somewhat relativistic (in a way, they are not really true or false), but they must be understood and acknowledged, and used as different lenses to look at the All.
If you can breathe, fully and deeply, and if your breath is consciously attuned, through feeling, to the tangible and infinite energy of the universe - only then can you love.
If your attention is always free of obsession with your own thoughts and reveries and memories and reactions - only then are you capable of genuine participation in life, even in the matters that might otherwise preoccupy or disturb you.
If your living body is open, relaxed, fluid with feeling, supple and graceful in its action and expression, and not bound up in a physically visible knot of tension and self-possession - only then can you live a truly effective and moral relational life in this human realm.
And - only then are you happy!
The only living and true religion in any society and in any historical epoch is the effort of the individual to surrender to the radical intuition of Truth and to be bodily transformed by the Radiant Transcendental Love-Energy that moves the world.
Mindless embodiment.
Consciousness without inwardness.
Thus it becomes obvious.
Every object is only Light, the Energy of Consciousness.
Even so, there is no mind.
Only this stark embodiment, without inwardness.
First transcend your atrocious mind, not the body.
Inwardness is flight from Life and Love.
Only the body is Full of Consciousness
Therefore, be the body-only, feeling into Life.
Surrender the mind into Love, until the body dissolves in Light.
Dare this Ecstasy, and never be made thoughtful by birth and experience and death.
Quite the tour de force, thank you for expressing your thoughts so clearly.
I especially liked the idea of salvation in the face of atheism and rampant godlessness: to rise to the level where we become our own judge, based on an alignment with logos, a sort of wholesome insight. Repentance becomes an internal suffering because of illumination instead of fear of external punishment. But only, as you say, if the capability for it is there - and the thirst for God you spoke of in connection with faith: the thirst must be great indeed for us to seek out the light, for the suffering and resistance are great as well.
As for the project of a transcendental theology for non-believers, I think it's very important (Jordan Peterson's success proves the point). Other approaches risk getting caught up in a knot of misleading presuppositions inherited from modernity and further twisted by our own times, and as a consequence, completely misunderstand ancient ideas.
It seems to me that two approaches are worth doing in parallel: 1) doing our best to express theological and religious ideas in our own natural ways, using modern language and b) getting a grip on the historical dynamics of presuppositions, à la R.G. Collingwood. These might even be somewhat relativistic (in a way, they are not really true or false), but they must be understood and acknowledged, and used as different lenses to look at the All.